Comedy · Drama · French Cinema
Amélie, or, Only the Beginning
Amélie brings life to the unseen. * * * Talk with someone about a piece of art, and they’ll tell you about themselves. Let me share my thoughts on Amélie,[…]
a
Comedy · Drama · French Cinema
Amélie brings life to the unseen. * * * Talk with someone about a piece of art, and they’ll tell you about themselves. Let me share my thoughts on Amélie,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Feminism · Indies · Interviews · SF & Fantasy
For me, on Supergirl, I was 100% in. It was the biggest opportunity that ever happened to me, and the process of making the film was very nourishing. I think[…]
Biopic · Directors · Experimental & Underground · War · Writers & Critics
I’m not interested in what happened next; I’m interested in what happens emotionally next. It’s like memory. Memory isn’t linear. It’s cyclical. A tiny thing can be the thing that’s[…]
Comedy · Communism and Socialism · Directors · Drama · Eastern European · Russia · War · Writers & Critics
Billy Wilder turned to these two plays because they offered the situations, structure, and characters that would allow his imagination to flower and create contemporary stories – a patriotic military[…]
Crime · Drama · Women in Film
Ramsay uses the distinct qualities of cinema, images and sound, to immerse you in the psychic space of her characters – and what an uncommonly beautiful space it is. It’s[…]
African American · Comedy · Drama · Eco · Race · Urban Conflict
The fundamental question of who will suffer the most from extreme heat, and on a broader scale climate change, is bound to systemic issues of race and class. Through Lee’s[…]
“Movies are dreams, doll, that you never forget,” says Mrs. Fabelman (Michelle Williams). She’s circling the nature of them, which the critic Andre Bazin described when he called cinema “an[…]
Dance · Drama · Exile and Displacement · Poverty · Theory
One of Frías de la Parra’s masterstrokes is to highlight the similar ways in which Monterrey and New York (otherwise such radically distinct cities) are brimming with diagonal lines: in[…]
Drama · Eco · Eco-horror · Essays
What does a scar tell us about a person? Where they’ve been, what they’ve been through, the style in which they conduct their lives. A scar is a reminder, an[…]
Franchises & Series · Military and Paramilitary · Thrillers & Action · War
Top Gun might leave viewers with the negative impression that all naval aviators are infantilized, high-functioning, pride-stricken narcissists, and I’m going to let you in on a secret. We are. But most[…]
“You just can’t beat wild imagination.” – Bob Bottin * * * It took decades for John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) to find an audience, on home video and cable.[…]
Dance · French Cinema · Interviews · Music & Musicals
Dancing in the streets of Rochefort was the best performing experience I’ve ever known. Reacting to real sunshine, breezes, cafés, and streets was miraculous. My emotions suddenly became as accessible[…]
Animation · Franchises & Series · Myth and Archetype · SF & Fantasy
Blockbuster films don’t have to be watered-down hero fare to succeed at the box office. The compelling design and archetypal simplicity of our comic-book heroes are gold mines for stories[…]
Drama · Mystery · Philosophy · Thrillers & Action
This is the central thesis Assayas raises here – instant gratification via the image suggests a greater degree of control over what we consume (including its ethics) when in fact[…]
Celebrity Culture · Crime · Digital · Drama · Societal Trends
The Bling Ring’s impossible challenge for us is to reject the moralizing. We feel superior to the teenagers because of the celebrity issue. The four girls and boy represent our[…]
Absurdism · African American · Horror · Surrealism · Westerns
The theme of exploitation is evident in Nope’s multiple references to a classic film. Not Jaws, The Goonies, or Close Encounters, or any of the Western films nodded at in[…]
The city of Visconti’s film is a palimpsest in which postwar modernity (nightclubs, movie theatres, beatniks, and loose women) is superimposed on the ruins of the city’s gothic past. Rather[…]
Franchises & Series · Horror · Men & Masculinity
We see how Jigsaw can fail, again and again, to help anyone and still blame it on them. We see how people can live through how little his traps teach[…]
Comedy · Historical & Epic · Native Americans · Revisionism · Westerns
Buffalo Bill and the Indians joins a select group of films whose popular failure nonetheless represented an aesthetic success: Patty Hearst (1987) and The King of Comedy (1983), come to[…]
Directors · Drama · Essays · Writers & Critics
Where Reid spends pages and pages absentmindedly ruminating on the many very painful, and very human, distinctions between Self and Other before losing himself in a tonal mess of relationship[…]